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Published: March 3rd 2018
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Paola at DAD
Note the Federal Hocking T-shirt! With Bill Elasky I made it to Mendoza, Argentina after some 30 hours of travel...weather in Texas nearly grounded our plane but we made it out between thunderstorms. You know you are in a cool place when you get through customs and are met by a group of handsome young people handing you boxes of grapes!
Once settled in to our hostel in the center of town we set off to find Paola Diaz. Paola is an English teacher in one of the national high schools. We met this past fall when she and a couple dozen Argentine educators came to Ohio University on a Fulbright program and Paola was assigned to Federal Hocking high school. She fit right in like one of the faculty and we agreed to stay in touch. On Friday Bill and I visited her school and began laying the ground work for what I hope will be an exchange of students and faculty between FH and DAD (the school in Mendoza).
The best part of the school visit was watching freshman orientation. Only freshman were at school today, school starts for everyone on Monday (well, not really, as teachers have called a nation-wide two-day
Freshman orientation at DAD
These kids could really dance! strike to protest low wages and losing sick days). The seniors led the orientation with games, singing, dancing, and just a lot of fun. I only wish I had ever been able to dance like these kids!
(One other note about the school. We walked in--no buzzer at the door, no metal detectors, no IDs. These folks love their children just as much as we do so they do not 'harden schools', they instead make it hard to get military style weapons.)
After the school visit Bill and I made our way back to Mendoza for yet another interesting challenge. Friday night is the parade for the Festival of Wines which is going on this week. The parade route runs right past our hostel and near the lot where the car is parked. But we could no longer get there due to the streets being closed. It took Bill's best Spanish and my willingness to charge up a one-way street the wrong way to get the car to the lot. (A note on parking--the hostel does not have parking and most of the lots around the city are hourly. But we tried and tried until we found Carlos,
the owner of the lot where we are parked three blocks away. When we explained that we needed to park for three days he magnanimously said we could, charged us 120 pesos a day, that is $6 US, and gave us his card and number in case we even needed any help while we are here.)
The parade started at 10 p.m. And by then the streets were packed with kids, families, hawkers with sandwiches tiaras. Each of the main floats carried the queen from one of the wine producing regions and her court. We were watchino for candy to be thrown to the crowd....but instead they tossed agricultural products! There were pears, apples, grapes, melons, and, yes, a water melon or two! Kids had small buckets taped on to long poles they would stretch out to see if the queens could throw the fruit into the basket!
After an hour and a half we decided we had had enough parade and ducked into a buffet that featured an open grill, of course. It was now 11:30 and people were still coming in to eat. You have to love a resturaunt that does not even open until 8:30.
I tried not to eat too much, but when you can walk up to the grill and ask the guy to slice off a piece of rare beef and he asks don't you want the sausage, how about the lamb, some grilled intestines perhaps? Who am I to say no?
Tomorrow another parade, and I think we have scored tickets to the big wine festival show at the outdoor amphitheater. Will let you know if that happens. Adios, amigos
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